Care Label Translation

Learn how to get better translations crafted by real people

We specialise in multi-lingual care label translation. We work with top retailers as well as leading fashion brands. Check out our Mothercare and New Look case studies to read more about our work. Don’t trust a generic translation company with care labelling. It may look simple, but it isn’t.

Top Care Label Translation needs:

Okay, so you want to internationalise your care labelling. Let’s think about some of the specialist needs:

Country of origin (usually abbreviated as COO)

COOs are just a list of countries, or are they? Usually a COO says something like “Made in China”. Firstly you need to think about use of capitalisation, do you use sentence case, as above, or all capitals? Secondly, it is important to realise that countries can be masculine or feminine, single or plural in many languages. This means that the “Made in” part will vary with the noun.

Fibre compositions

A fibre composition often has two elements, it identifies the part of the garment, and the fibre or fibres used. Again, this may seem simple. However, we are talking about a co-location of a few words, often out of context. “Sleeves 100% cotton”, seems quite straightforward, but what about “Top 100% cotton”? The problem here is that the word “Top” can mean many things in English. Is it an item called a “Top”? Is it the “top” part of a garment? Or is it even a “Top” Hat? All of these have different possible translations.

Our skill is to know which to use when. If you use a none specialist, or worse a machine programme like Google translate, you risk the wrong choice. This could make your label look very funny, or be offensive, and/or none compliant. Any of these outcomes are bad for business, and could mean you need to re-label, adding to costs and delaying delivery.

Wash care instructions

Wash care can also be complicated. If you only need care symbols then great. Many products however, need some wash care translations. These can be simple, like “wash separately”, or more complicated. For example “WE RECOMMEND TO USE ANTI SLIP MATTING UNDER THIS PRODUCT TO AVOID SLIPPING ON NON-CARPETED FLOORS”. There are several translation issues with this last example. Firstly if you need the text in lots of languages, you already have a big label just with this phrase. Secondly, what do you mean by “anti-slip matting”. A “mat” could have several possible translations.

Our approach to Garment Care Label Translation

So how do we deal with these translation issues? Its all about specialism:

We are specialist Care Label Translators.

30 years experience of this type of work.

We work with top brands.

All translations are carefully checked.

Care Label Translation formats:

We can provide translations in Word, Excel and many other formats. We can also provide PDF copies to verify correct display of fonts, accents and special characters. Other services also include multilingual typesetting. We can set text in most major languages and design formats.

Font compatibility of care labelling

Most major design programmes have good font compatibility these days. This is vital to correct labelling. We normally supply translations in Unicode compliant fonts.

It is important that you check the correct appearance of the font, as well as accents and special characters. At very small font sizes accents and special characters can be too small to see. This renders them invisible on care labelling when printed.

Printing your care label translation

We can prepare print ready multilingual artwork if required. For this we need you to give detailed instructions regarding layout, font sizes and any required house style.

All major design programmes such as InDesign and Illustrator corrupt right to left languages such as Arabic, Farsi and Hindi. It is vital you do this properly. A corrupt text doesn’t just look bad, its unreadable.

There are Middle Eastern versions of both Illustrator and InDesign. Standard versions of the programmes render the text unreadable, unless you use a workaround. This involves individually highlighting and correcting individual letters. This process is time consuming. It also has a high risk of error, especially if you can’t read the language.

The Middle Eastern version negates this problem. Later versions of the CS suite can handle the live text providing you first set it correctly. Older versions need to have the text in an EPS format to avoid corruption.

Very reliable, you’re always there for us, and you’re fast!

Julie Haslam, Paxar UK

Wide range of languages

We translate care labels regularly into over 60 languages. We are used to tight schedules. Talk to us about your requirements.